Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have been seen using the popular messenger app for gamers, Discord, to coordinate drone surveillance and strikes.
The effects of the ban are likely to hit the front lines in Ukraine as well, where both Kyiv and Moscow's troops have been seen using Discord to coordinate drone operations.
Several videos posted online have shown uniformed men watching surveillance drone feeds on the platform, including one clip said to have captured the interior of a command post in Bakhmut.
Maybe it took this long to develop an alternative. They now have an alternative... Right?
The Kremlin wouldn't send it's citizens off to fight without being sufficiently equipped... Right?
I'm more appalled by the fact that the Russian military was apparently able to use discord as a weapon of war to facilitate their unprovoked war of agression and killing Ukranians. Discord should take a long hard look at what other stuff happens on their platform.
I take a far grimmer look on things. If text and image platforms have issues moderating, I'd imagine discord is more difficult and thus worse. They probably monitor for stuff that is detrimental to their service and that's it. For the rest they rely on reports.
And about being asked to keep up by governments, I again am inclined to not think anyone did. Why would they.
Early in the war one of their generals was bombed off the face of the earth because troops at his location were using their regular old cellphones for military coordination. Russian communication issues have been a huge stumbling block for them this whole time.
This is absolutely bizarre and a disgrace to the Russian military that this was even a thing. Like, Russia has complete in-house comm systems, all the way down to the silicon. They're as elegant as charcoal clothing iron, but at least they're secure. In fact, they're so paranoid about NSA plants that they even force businesses to use in-house encryption to submit accounting reports. And then the same idiots allow risking lives of officers by using random software in a command center...
Though I feel like the response is also far from best. There are numerous alternatives they can switch to, so the ban is mostly going to only hit innocent gamers. It'd be much more impactful if they just silently handed access to those channels over to Ukrainians.
Is nobody in the world capable of forwarding encrypted RTP packets besides Discord? Seriously we had VOIP figured out before we had internet Figured out I don’t think we have to forwards all our communication through adversarial governments to communicate locally.
There can't seriously be respectable, noteworthy people in Russia saying that banning Discord is a mistake because it helps the Russian military. That's bizzaro world stuff even for them.